By Thanksgiving week. The holiday that America built around a table, around food, around the idea that a family gathers and eats and gives thanks. For adoptees, Thanksgiving has an extra layer — we are the thing our families are thankful for, the chosen children, the gifts that arrived by agency rather than biology, and the gratitude that surrounds us is both genuine and suffocating. I am thankful for David and Karen. I am thankful for the split-level in Bellevue and the pot roast and the golden retriever and the education and the love. And I am also tired of being the object of thankfulness. I want to be a person, not a blessing.
Dr. Yoon and I discussed Thanksgiving in our session on Tuesday. She said, "Holidays are hard for adoptees because they're performances of family, and your family is always performing." She's right. Karen's Thanksgiving is a production: the turkey brined for twenty-four hours, the stuffing made from scratch, the green bean casserole (canned mushroom soup, French's fried onions — the recipe hasn't changed in thirty years), the pumpkin pie, the table set with the good china. It's beautiful and warm and it's also a stage set for the family Karen built from adoption and persistence and love, and sometimes I'm an actor in that family and sometimes I'm the audience and sometimes I'm both.
This year I made a Korean dish for the Thanksgiving table: japchae, the glass noodle stir-fry, because it's festive and colorful and the kind of dish that works alongside turkey without competing with it. I also made a pumpkin version of hotteok — Korean sweet pancakes, normally filled with brown sugar and cinnamon and nuts, but I swapped in pumpkin filling because it's November and pumpkins are everywhere and fusion is what I do, even when I don't call it that. The hotteok were an experiment. The dough was tricky — yeasted, sticky, requiring the kind of tactile confidence that comes from making bread, which I haven't done much of. My first few hotteok were misshapen and leaked filling. By the sixth, I had it: press flat, seal, fry. The pumpkin filling oozed out in sweet, spiced ribbons.
Thursday. Bellevue. Karen's full Thanksgiving spread. Turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (jellied, from a can, the kind that retains the shape of the can and nobody mentions it), Karen's pumpkin pie, and my contributions: japchae and pumpkin hotteok. Kevin drove up from Portland — his first Thanksgiving with the family in three years, the last two lost to rehab and recovery. He looked good. Solid. Maria didn't come — "too soon," Kevin said, and I understood. You don't bring a new person into the Parks' Thanksgiving until you're sure the relationship can survive Karen's scrutiny, which is gentle but total.
We ate. We ate the turkey and the stuffing and the japchae and the green bean casserole and the hotteok and the pie. David carved with the precision of a man cutting sheet metal. Karen served with the efficiency of a woman who has been directing this operation for decades. Kevin ate thirds. I ate everything. The japchae sat on the table between the cranberry sauce and the mashed potatoes, glass noodles glistening beside America's most traditional meal, and nobody made a thing of it. It was just food. Korean food at an American Thanksgiving, eaten by a family that is Korean and American and neither and both, and the table held all of it, the way tables do.
After dinner, Kevin and I washed dishes while David napped and Karen wrapped leftovers. Standing at the kitchen sink, hands in soapy water, Kevin said quietly, "I'm glad I'm here." I said, "I'm glad you're here too." He said, "I'm glad we're both here." And I knew what he meant — not just here at Thanksgiving but here in the world, alive, functioning, recovering from the particular wound of being Korean children raised by white parents in a country that didn't quite know what to do with us. We're both here. We're both building. Different tools, different timelines, but the same foundation work: who am I? Where do I belong? How do I feed myself, in every sense of the word?
I drove home with a container of leftovers — turkey and japchae and a slice of pie — and ate kimchi from the jar standing at my counter and thought about gratitude. Real gratitude, not the performed kind. I'm grateful for Kevin's sobriety. I'm grateful for Dr. Yoon's clarity. I'm grateful for the kimchi in my fridge and the gochugaru on my shelf and the Zojirushi and the Korean textbook and the twenty-one dishes I've learned to make and the table in Bellevue that held my japchae without comment. I'm grateful. Not because I'm supposed to be. Because I actually am. And the difference between obligated gratitude and earned gratitude is the difference between performing a life and living one. I'm living one now. Finally. Eight months in. One Korean dish at a time.
The hotteok almost broke me — six misshapen, leaking pancakes before I finally understood what the dough was asking of me. That tactile confidence I mentioned? It doesn’t come from reading. It comes from doing, and from understanding why yeast behaves the way it does. If you want to try these for yourself — or any yeasted dough, from hotteok to dinner rolls to something entirely your own — here is the foundation I wish I’d had before I started: a practical guide to working with yeast, the ingredient that requires you to slow down and trust the process.
Working With Yeast — A How-To Tutorial
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 1 hr 25 min (includes rise time) | Servings: Makes 1 standard batch of yeasted dough (8–12 portions)
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast or instant yeast
- 1 cup warm water (105–115°F for active dry; 120–130°F for instant)
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar (to feed the yeast)
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- 2 tablespoons neutral oil or melted unsalted butter
- 1 egg, lightly beaten (optional, for enriched doughs)
Instructions
- Check your yeast. Active dry yeast must be proofed before use. Combine warm water and sugar in a small bowl, sprinkle yeast over the top, and let sit for 5–10 minutes. The mixture should foam and smell pleasantly yeasty. If nothing happens, your yeast is dead — start with a fresh packet. Instant yeast can be mixed directly into dry ingredients and skips this step.
- Combine dry ingredients. Whisk flour and salt together in a large bowl. Make a well in the center.
- Add wet ingredients. Pour the activated yeast mixture (or warm water for instant yeast), oil, and beaten egg if using into the well. Stir with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms.
- Knead the dough. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 8–10 minutes by hand, or 5–6 minutes in a stand mixer with a dough hook, until smooth and slightly tacky but not sticky. The dough should spring back slowly when poked. Resist the urge to add too much flour — a slightly sticky dough produces a softer result.
- First rise (bulk fermentation). Shape the dough into a ball. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, turn once to coat, and cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel. Let rise in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in size, about 1 hour. A cold oven with the light on works well.
- Punch down and shape. Gently press the dough down to release gas. Divide and shape as your recipe directs — rounds for hotteok, logs for rolls, a single mass for focaccia. Handle with confidence; hesitant hands produce uneven dough.
- Second rise (proof). Allow shaped portions to rest 15–20 minutes before cooking or baking. They should look puffed and feel airy. This step is what gives the finished product its open, pillowy crumb.
- Cook or bake as directed. For pan-fried applications like hotteok, press portions flat in an oiled skillet over medium heat and cook 2–3 minutes per side until deep golden. For baked applications, bake at 375–400°F until the internal temperature reaches 190–200°F.
Nutrition (per serving, base dough only)
Calories: 175 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 30g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 195mg